As a Heroic Predacon
by Consuelo Higdon
Summary: Blackarachnia wakes up with a big headache and realizes she needs a helmet.


Blackarachnia woke up feeling heavy. She still had her eyes closed in sleep, for once thankful that she didn't need as much. Still, she didn't want to wake up, mostly because she was having the most wonderful dream. A nice dream where she had stumbled upon a cure in transwarp energy. There was an unexpected explosion, but it fixed them. Both of them.

She woke to prodding on her face. Opening her eyes, the mechanical wiring and the organic registers forcing her to squint a bit at the light. Night didn't last very long on this planet, did it? She woke up to a very large, full green eye with a pupil on it.

She stared for a bit, then realised who it was.

"Cheetor! Get offa me!" After a while she realized that the animals she found understood the Universal Base language, such as the universal greeting and such. However, for English, she had to rely on tone of voice and volume. After about a deca-cycle she had finally discovered how they reacted to what. When it came to Cheetor, he responded in fear to low-frequency tones and a volume a bit louder than normal speech pattern—and a commanding tone thrown in for good measure.

Cheetor, needless to say got off quickly. Blackarachnia pushed herself back up, and rubbed her head. Oh wait... she kept forgetting. That helmet she used to have fell off before she went to this planet. Without it she was subject to feeling a lot more pain in her processor than usual, with such sensitive tissue in the back. She had found one spot that hurt so bad that it almost knocked her out. She had then taken to wearing that helmet so no one could touch that spot.

Now how was she supposed to protect her head without a helmet!?

"Spider-bot!" Ugh, not him again.

"What is it now, Waspinator?" She turned around to look at the overgrown monster towering above her. She was actually used to being a little smaller than the average Decepticon, but this guy was almost as big at Megatron, for spark's sake! How'd he go from the bottom of the totem pole to Mega-over-sized in just a few minutes?

"Monkey-man can't find Horn-mouth!" Rhinox is missing. Again. Of course he is, he hasn't gone a day without going missing for at least 2 minutes. How he managed to STAY lost is a mystery considering his size. But she had more important things to worry about. She needed a new helmet.

"Oh really? Primal can't find Rhinox? Well, too fragging bad! In case you haven't noticed, I'M missing my helmet! And, unlike you mister Hard-hat-head.." She pounded on Waspinator's head for good measure, a hollow sound coming out of it, "MY head is very sensitive! So leave me alone!" She turned around and started looking for something to make a new helmet out of.

Next thing she knew, three fingers were squeezing the back of her head.

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_She was... playing with shadows. Making random shapes out of her servos, she showed them to Optimus and Sentinel sitting on nothing. Everything else was an inviting, saturated yellow nothing._

_Sentinel was taking Organics Classes at the time. When he first learned about Organics, he seemed very fond of them. He even took care to remember the names of almost all of them. Elita even heard a rumor that he named two cadets he had while he was a Drill Sergeant after two similar species of organics. She forgot what their names were, but she remembered the forms._

"_Is that a Wasp or a Bumble bee?" Sentinel asked. Elita didn't say anything, instead she moved two of her fingers for larger wings and a slightly pointier stinger._

"_Ah! Wasp it is then!"_

"_I still can't believe you've memorized the name, shape, size and traits of so many organic creatures!" Optimus had a big smile on his face, though with a hint of skepticism. His smile only grew wider when Sentinel revealed that he wrote some of the details down just to help remember them. Fumbling a bit more with her hands, Elita asked to guess what her shadows made._

"_I see a rat."_

"_Why not a mouse?"_

"_Mice have squatter forms and shorter tails."_

"_Okay, how about this one?"_

"_Hmmm... Looks like a cheetah."_

"_A Cheetah? What's a cheetah?"_

"_You really need to take the Organics classes, Optimus." a giggle escaped Elita's audios._

"_Oh really, and why should I?"_

"_Because then you'll know what this is!" She intertwined her fingers and made a head with her thumbs. Sentinel laughed. No one who didn't take the class would be able to identify it correctly. Optimus cracked after asking what it was over and over again._

_They wouldn't tell him, so he had to guess. And insect, a crab, some vast predatory bird, even an Angler fish! But still he couldn't guess what Elita made. After giving him some clues, it didn't get any easier to guess. Apparently it was small, had eight of almost everything, and was a close cousin to the scorpion._

_After giving up ten times over, laughing and having the time of their lives, Sentinel finally told him what Elita had made._

"_It's a spider!"_

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Blackarachnia woke up groggily. She pushed herself up with a huge headache. She tried to find out what was happening. She didn't feel like she was herself. She felt more like a spider, but she knew she was in robot mode... or was she?

After a while she stretched her servos a bit. Then she realized she was in her organic mode. She was a spider right now. She decided to walk around a bit to help get herself back into the feel of things. After scampering around for a bit, she realised that she was all alone in the middle of the forest. No one else was around. Not even that weird hawk that came out nowhere one day and had some sort of attraction to her. Looking around, she saw some awkwardly obvious prints and decided to follow them.

Decidedly unaware of what was happening, Blackarachnia took no chances, and prepared for the worst. Following the tracks, she avoided heavy steps in case there was a trap somewhere for whatever reason. Waspinator could not be trusted alone with the animals, and who knew how long she was asleep!?

Maybe he told the other animals about what she did to him. She didn't care much about him. If he didn't trust her so much, they wouldn't even be here! Or maybe they would, considering she would probably force him inside anyway. She really didn't care if he liked it or not. She could barely understand his broken speech pattern! And those new clicks in his voice apparently was some universal insect-to-arachnid language or something. Her spider side always detected a background fear and a desperate need for help.

She had actually remembered a bit more of her Organics Studies back at the Autobot Academy. She remembered that all the animals, even though they all made different sounds, had a universal unspoken language. Often times, similar species would have a basic understanding of each other, and that way they all could find out the true intentions of something. Coupled with the senses and a little bit of practice, any organic could understand another, completely different species just through observation.

Apparently, This was the only way they could communicate to each other. Blackarachnia, so accustomed to talking straight at each other through language, wasn't used to all these things, and couldn't really communicate to them comfortably. Or at least, she could talk to them and she wouldn't know what they were talking about unless she reffered to her organic mode.

She hated this stupid thing.

She kept pressing forward, and finally reached a cave. Studying it for a bit (and realizing she would be too tall in robot mode for), she entered it evasively and carefully. Who knew what they were doing in there? They could very well be planning to get rid of her! And then they would all just play around in the forest until some monster came around and ate them!?

Speeding her pace, she finally found them. They were all scrunched together in a line, Waspinator a HUGE difference compared to the other animals (which were about as big as Blackarachnia's organic mode to begin with), his arms behind him with what she could barely register as a smile on his face. All the others were smiling with mischievous glances to her every once in a while.

"THERE YOU ARE! What do you think you're doing, trying to give me a spark-attack!? You could get hurt without me around! If it weren't for me you'd all be gobbled up by some random monster thing!" She waved her arms and turned and swiveled and transformed into robot form and did so much she didn't notice the others for barely a second. "Do you have anything to say for yourselves!? HUH!?"

"Waspinator and Squishy Friends know Spider-bot." Wait, what? That made no sense. The insecticidal clicks in the background told her organic half that he was being honest, and taking another shot at trust. He almost seemed like he wanted to give her something...

"Excuse me?" She wasn't sure what was going to happen but she wasn't going to take any chances. She prepared to pounce and made sure she would stay light on her feet in case there was a trap door underneath her. Tensed, she listened to the rest of Waspinator's talk.

"Waspinator... Understand Spider-bot now..." He looked down at Cheetor, and he nodded. Brimming with confidence (or so it seemed) he extended his left servo. Blackarachnia couldn't believe what she saw. It was the exact same thing she had been wanting for a while now.

It was her helmet.

"Waspinator... Forgive Spider-bot." Blackarachnia took the helmet. She looked at the animals, all with smug, contented looks on their faces. There was something coming from them. All of them. She hadn't felt something like this for who knows how long... She put on her helmet, and a new attitude too.

She had friends again.


End file.
